Blogotional

An eclectic brew of odds and ends designed to get people to read short devotional Christian thoughts about the news of the day, or at least what seems to be the hot topic of discussion in the blogosphere.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Comic Art

SO BAD, THEY'RE GOOD

You would "think" that a guy so smart he could plot Reed Richards into a corner would have a better haircut than the Mad Thinker.

Some would have you "think" that Mad Thinker is one of Marvel's greatest villains. I "think" Mad Thinker needs a tailor.

This guy is no villain, he was an excuse for Jack Kirby to draw really cool, and reasonably abstract "androids," becasue let's face it, any guy that builds himself as the Mad Thinker is not gonna be real high on the physicality scale.

The androids are cool and if I worked harder at this I would investigate which came first, MT's droid of the Blockheads on Art Clokey's Gumby show - let's face it, they have a lot in common. Well, sorta, the Blockheads just wanted to get in Gumby and Pokey's way MT's droid is tool to help take over the world. (Cue "Pinky and the Brain" music.)

And what's with the "mad" in Mad Thinker. You would think a guy that fancies himself suitable for world domination would not consider himself insane, but it seems like comic bad guys always take the monikers with which they are hung, negative adjectives and all. I guess they are taking Tyrion's advice from early in the Game of Thrones books.

All I know is this, when I finally lose it and try to take over the world, I am going to have a much cooler name. better threads and DEFINITELY a better haircut.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Excess

We often write about the “evangelical circus” we see in America today, and some are not pleased with us equating evangelicalism with clowns and dancing bears wearing tutus. So perhaps, just for today, we’ll change the nomenclature to “excessive evangelicalism.” The excess can be in the size of the church building, the number of satellite churches, and the number of programs offered by the church to the leader’s preaching style, content of the messages, or personal lifestyle. Just because a church is large does not make it excessive, just as a small church is not necessarily free of excess. Yet I don’t think it will take you too long to spot the excessive evangelicals in your neighborhood or in the nation. Sure, I could kick around some names, but that is not what I want to focus on here.

I just don’t believe excesses like those we see today in evangelicalism can be sustained over the long haul. Thus my prediction that a collapse in churches, parachurch ministries and individuals who practice excessive evangelicalism is inevitable. And I think this is a very, very good thing, as well as a very dangerous thing.

Dunn is right here, but what he should also point out is that the excesses of today's Evangelicalism are in response to yesterday's denominational protestant excess which came about in response to Roman Catholic excesses.... It could even be conceivably argued that Christianity is a response to Judaic excess.

Seems to me excess is a symptom, not the problem.

We seem to grab on to something and beat it like a dead horse. Bend it, shape it, use it, over use it, until it turns into something it was never supposed to be. In other words, virtually everything we touch corrupts. Sounds like sin to me.

Someone pays you the world’s most backhanded compliment: “I just don’t understand how someone as great as you isn’t married yet.” = +1 pointPeople are constantly volunteering you for things because “you’re single, you’ve got so much free time.” = +1 point

To justify giving a four-week marriage sermon series to a congregation that is 60% single, the pastor throws out one blanket statement like this at the beginning of the series, “And you single people listen up to this too, this well serve you well when you get married.” = +2 points

When people introduce you, they feel compelled to list out your accomplishments, “This is Sally, my single friend who owns her own home, drives a luxury sedan, and has a very, very stable job.” = +3 points

There is the problem that this thing is aimed at women, like single men have no issues. It is also skewed very young, Acuff seems to forget that singleness resulting from divorce or death of a spouse is a significant issue. But now I am exercising my own point.

Singleness is a state of being. It inhabits our lives for different periods and often at different times. It is common to every person on the planet - I mean let's face it - we're all single for a while and then we are not, and then roughly half the people end up single again. It is not that unique a thing.

And that is the real point here. Yes, the state of being single is different than the state of being married, but it is a very common state and people who are in it are not freakish or weird or anything else. Maybe, just maybe, if we started with that little fact - things would be better.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Only 1 of 7 matters

OK, it's cute, and each of those things is an issue, but do they really matter?

When I look at that list - I see "sinfulness" and the rest of the list simply disappears. We are dissatisfied becasue we are sinful. We are certainly selfish becasue we are sinful. Sluggishness is but a symptom of sin.

Our sin lies at the root of all things problematic.

It has been my experience that while there are problems running a church, and some structures are better than others - they only thing that can produce total failure is people. For example - I absolutely think the Presbyterian system is the best system for running a church - but it is a system that requires because of the amount of power it places in the pews a deeply committed and reasonably large core of people in the church who actively seek Christian maturity. I generally dislike the more top-down pastor personality heavy approach of the Pentecostal and Baptist churches. Much of my distaste is born of the incredible abuse I have seen flow out of those systems.

However, those preferences stated, there are some beautiful top-down churches and most Presbyterian churches are failing as we speak. Conclusion - the system is secondary to the people that operate it. The health of an organization is largely measures by the health of the individual comprising the organization. That does not mean just physical health, it means spiritual health.

A bit more focus on that and a bit less on body counts and organizational charts and I thin the church just might get back to the business of changing the world.

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.

Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason. . . . The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. . . . There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it’s practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. . . .

The old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which makes him stop working altogether. . . . We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. (Orthodoxy [reprint, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995], 36-37.)

I always worry when I read stuff like this - not because I think we are suppose to be uncertain, but becasue It's not really about what we know, but how we express what we know.

Just a couple of quick comments. One, what we know and what we think we know are two very different things. Let us take the doctrine of the Trinity as an example. Do we "know" this? I would argue a definitive "NO." You see the very doctrine itself is essentially an admission of a mystery - an agreement to not know. And yet, we often use this doctrine, this doctrine of not-knowing, as if it were the most certain thing pinning down our entire universe. God, most certainly is that essential pin, but His precise nature is beyond us.

Having a doctrine that says it is beyond us does not mean we understand, it just means we can make our lack of understanding sound important.

Secondly, knowing something is not a license to be a jerk. All of us remember Joe-straight-A's. The guy that always got the best grades and was more than willing to make sure we knew it and make sure the rest of us knew that we had to sit towards the rear of the classroom to make room for his enormous brain. In my calls this person had the name "Norma." Or as we refereed to her when she was not listening "Abnorma." She was a tad bit reviled. Was she smart - oh yeah, very. But no one cared because she was a jerk.
Jesus undoubtedly know all there was to know about quantum physics. Yet He said nothing. Knowing the truth and saying it are two very different things.Technorati Tags:knowledge, humilityGenerated By Technorati Tag Generator